


Nobody's Pawn

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Dooku the Rat [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dooku's brain engages, Gen, What Darth Vader?, god bless Matthew Stover, treachery is the way of the sith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6645070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In what should have been the last moments of his life, Count Dooku of Serreno, Darth Tyranus, repays betrayal with betrayal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody's Pawn

Treachery is the way of the Sith. 

Count Dooku -- Darth Tyranus -- falls to his knees, agony from the stumps of his wrists making his mouth go slack, his eyes blank for a moment, and his ears fill for a moment with the sound of two lightsabers. Crossed at his throat, held bare nanometers from taking his head off. For a moment, he forgets that lesson and looks to his Master...

...and Palpatine's proud, laughing voice calls, "Good, Anakin! Good! I _knew_ you could do it!" 

He knows, in that moment, that he is utterly betrayed. And as Palpatine barks into the ears of this young poor excuse for a Jedi, this boy that blazes now with the Dark Side of the Force, blazes with his fury finally unchecked the words that will end him, "Kill him! Kill him now!" Count Dooku decides to _fight back_. 

And the boy's -- this boy whose eyes are flames, who wields the Dark Side like he was born to it -- more than a decade of Jedi training buys him the moment he needs. 

He does not beg. He does not cower or try to cringe back from the blades as the boy's shoulders flex, his hands clench on the lightsabers in them. Instead he smiles past his agony and says with all of his own power of command, "Do it, boy." 

Anakin is torn from his anger, from his hate, in shock as his victim speaks to him. He stares at the man he has defeated, one he has fought for years now (and always failed to capture), in surprise. Something of the innocence that the war has not eradicated, the part that wants life to be good, is in his eyes now. But his hands tighten on the hilts of the 'sabers, and his wrists twitch almost imperceptibly toward the cut.

"Do it, Anakin! Do it for all he has done to you, to those you protect!" Palpatine urges.

Dooku watches the pause, the shock, and he ignores his traitorous Master to focus on the boy, to speak honestly to him -- honesty, after all, is as much a weapon as anything else -- "Do it, Skywalker, and Fall with me. You're half Sith already. 

"All you need is this one. last. step. So _take_ it, boy!" 

"Sith, me... no!" Anakin recoils away from that thought, guilt over his last loss of control sweeping through him.

"Anakin! You cannot listen to him!" Palpatine shouts, sensing his grasp on the young man falter.

The boy falters, his guilt -- and now he was interested in what the boy had done before, to bring that to life -- a flare in the Force that has a chance of dousing the flames in his eyes, and Dooku seizes the momentary advantage. "You, yes. Rage _is_ a weapon... but the weapon of a Sith or a Nightsister, boy. 

"You were never meant for the Order, Skywalker, not with that rage in you. Go ahead. Kill me, strike me down in cold blood, and give my Master the apprentice he is willing to trade my life for." 

'My Master', and Anakin can feel Palpatine's emotions growing… darker. Pushing him to kill an unarmed man, pushing him down the wrong path. A path forbidden to every Jedi.

"You!" A simple Force push shoves Dooku far from Anakin, as he whirls to confront the Chancellor. "You used me! You've acted as my friend, all these years!" His anger flares, burning hotter, even as he advances toward the man, ignoring the stress of the ship around him still coming under fire.

"Anakin, I _am_ your friend. I have always been your friend. You surely cannot believe anything **that** man says..." 

Dooku has to admire his Master for the sweet reason, the gentle affection he can so easily bring to bear, even as this situation spirals out of his control. He leaves the argument between them to them, and with a desperate grasp at the Force, he flings energy and strength at the other relevant being in this tableaux. His best student's beloved student, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

//Wake up, Kenobi,// he sends along with the strength. //Wake up.// 

Obi-Wan hurts, and he is so tired, so groggy, but something… something won't let him rest. He starts to come up toward consciousness, and then… he is fully aware. The ship they are on is hit by another barrage of proton torpedoes, near breaking up, pitching toward its death-fall. On instinct, he calls his lightsaber to his hand, not even needing to see it as he staggers up. Dooku is there, down and to one side, staring at him... as Anakin advances on the Chancellor in full menace.

"Anakin!" The shout is instinct. He can't let the Sith twist his former Padawan into doing his dirty work!

"Master, it's the Chancellor! Dooku named him as Master!" Anakin calls back, his eyes never leaving the Chancellor, but his shoulders change, and Obi-Wan feels some control return to his brother in arms.

"Master Kenobi," the Chancellor calls, and Dooku is still faintly amazed by the ability to sound so incredibly sincere, so relieved and grateful, when he has to be seething with fury. "Thank goodness, you're all right! There's something -- " 

Dooku laughs, sharp and bright, twisting to sit up -- he uses one stump without thinking, and nearly blacks out from the pain -- as he speaks. "Did you think you could betray _me_ , oh my Master, and not pay for it?" 

"Answer him, Chancellor. Tell me the real reason you demanded I kill him, when he is disarmed and captured!" Anakin's voice is almost a growl. 

He did what? The thought flashes through Obi-Wan's groggy mind, but he's going over to the defeated man, ready to take charge of him, even as the Chancellor and Anakin face off.

The Chancellor is still in the chair, energy cuffs holding him there.

"Anakin, we need to get moving, with both of them," Obi-Wan tells his friend. "The Sith could be lying, you know."

"So I could," Dooku agrees, mild, letting his student's surprisingly-good student get him upright as the deck pitches again -- turbolaser fire, this time -- under their feet, "but I am not. No more than I was on Geonosis, when you ignored me." 

"Anakin," the Chancellor's coaxing, gentle voice comes again, "your friend was unconscious, I am helpless, and he is far too dangerous to leave alive. Have you not told me, so often, what he is capable of? 

"I was thinking of our _survival_ , my friend."

"Leave survival to us, Chancellor; it's what we're best at, despite everything this war has done to us!" Anakin snaps at him as he moves to release the chair's binders. "You will answer our questions, Chancellor, and I will not let you out of my eye-sight until we convene the Senate to do so. With Dooku there."

"Anakin," Obi-Wan calls out quietly, trying to rein in the temper he feels growing so dark in his partner. "Let's just move, with both gentlemen, shall we? I do not like the pitch of the ship."

Dooku knows that he is likely to be dead before they escape this ship, but it won't be with him on his knees, sacrificed to nothing but the goal of making Anakin Skywalker the next true Sith. "Do mind the ray shields in the hallways," he said mildly, "and don't forget Griev -- " 

Another barrage hits, and this one tilts the world at forty-five degrees with damage to the gravity generators. Without his hands, he can't grab hold of anything around them. He falls, hard, but at least he's not the only one. Glorious. Just _glorious_. 

Then he hears it. The faint 'tink' of a lightsaber hilt hitting a piece of wall-now-floor, a few centimeters from him. It is his own, and while the surprisingly-dangerous pair of jokers scramble to get their footing and keep his Master in view, Dooku of Serreno acts. 

He was a master of telekinetic manipulation before he transcended the Jedi to become Sith. It is the simplest thing in the galaxy to focus on his own lightsaber and fling it with his eyes, igniting the blade only as it reaches his dangling Master's back. 

There is a moment's awareness of the danger, but there is a curse upon the Sith, preventing those of Darth Bane's line from seeing the cause of their own deaths. Palpatine tries to find his defenses, but the lightsaber plunges through his back, tearing and burning death in its passage through ribs and lung and heart, for Dooku had more than enough hate and anger to strike true.

"No!" Obi-Wan shouts as he realizes what has happened. His guilt blossoms in the Force; Dooku is his prisoner, and he has failed to stop the assassination.

Anakin captures a solid hold so he can turn his lightsaber threateningly toward Dooku, eyes blazing once again.

"You dare?! Even if you aren't lying, he had to answer the Republic!"

This boy is _such_ a boy. Dooku shakes his head slightly, his mouth quirking. "You say that as though I care. He was going to use me as your first murder, child. I took exception, and I want to live, not strangle to death on my own closed trachea.

"Also, I have more than enough proof for you." 

"You had better," Anakin snaps at him, before speaking into his wrist comm. "Artoo, status? Is there a ship anywhere aboard we can use?"

Obi-Wan, mindful now of the threat Dooku still is, wraps his Force awareness around the elder man. "Please tell us good news, Artoo," he mutters under his breath, even as he worries; the astromech has been a little erratic lately.

"Hey," Anakin protests, "it's not Artoo's fault!" 

Artoo responds with a staticky set of warbles that are, in fact, _not_ good news, the gravity of the ship twists again, and Anakin groans.

"What did the droid say?" Dooku asks, astromech binary nothing he had ever bothered to learn. 

"Several direct hits on the hangar bay. My fighter and the droid trifighters are scrap. Artoo is safe, but there's no way out there," Anakin translates, before a buckling twist of the ship, a groan of metal, and a firm nudge from the Force sends all three of them running for the open doors of what was a turbolift a second ago and is now a hallway. If they don't get down the lift before the spire they're in breaks, they are _all_ dead. 

"Oh, look, just another day in the war," Obi-Wan says, even as they are moving to survive. Somehow, they will… and then deal with the future.


End file.
